Abbott's Walk is a Grade II* listed building in the Dorset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 26 January 1956. Monastic building. 2 related planning applications.
Abbott's Walk
- WRENN ID
- noble-chapel-ochre
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Dorset
- Constituency
- West Dorset MP: Edward Morello (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 26 January 1956
- Type
- Monastic building
- Address
- Abbott's Walk, Church Street, Abbotsbury, DT3 4JJ
- OS grid reference
- SY 578 851
- Coordinates
- 50.66472, -2.5984
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Abbott's Walk is a monastic building, possibly the Abbot's Lodging, now serving as a private residence. It dates from the 14th and 17th centuries, with later 19th-century cart-shed arches added. The structure features coursed rubble-stone walls with stone quoins and slate roofs, which include stone gable-copings and scroll kneelers. There are brick stacks at the far west gable from a 19th-century extension and a 20th-century stack on the rear wall.
The left side of the building has a 19th-century range that is two storeys high, with three windows featuring three-light cast-iron casements with wooden cills, along with a 20th-century two-light wooden casement with lead lights. Segmental stone arches are present, and there is a 20th-century stone porch with a pitched slate roof and a 20th-century door.
The main range includes two cart-shed entrances with segmental stone heads that are now blocked and replaced with 20th-century bow-windows. A 14th-century doorway with jambs and a straight head is blocked low down, with a concrete two-light mullion above. A 17th-century three-light stone mullion window has straight-chamfered jambs and a transom, with fixed wooden windows.
The northeast corner of the building projects as an oratory, featuring an east wall with a window that has two tiers of four-light mullions, each with a trefoil-cusped head from the 14th century. Above this is a three-light stone mullion window, straight-chamfered and from the 17th century. The north elevation has a blocked 14th-century doorway with a four-centred head, a two-light 14th-century window with trefoil-cusping in a square head, and a large 14th-century window that is two-light and transomed with trefoiled ogee heads and a sexfoil-in-circle above, complete with a keeled label. An external stairway with a depressed-arch head leads up to a landing, which has been altered in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Inside, the east wall south of the oratory features a 14th-century head-corbel, with hair surviving but half of the face missing. In the oratory area, there is a 14th-century piscina in the south wall with a trefoil ogee head, a drain, and a credence shelf above. Two plain corbels are located at the springing height of the east window.
Local climate
Abbott's Walk receives an average of 840 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 55% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 73% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 19 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 80% of listed buildings. Of these, 7 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- Sale history — 2 transactions since 2015
- Related listed building consents — 2 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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